We take pride in fitting an OS into a box it was never meant to run on. We tickle to tell an Ubuntu user how we just recompiled the kernel in our Gentoo or Slack build. For me personally, it's what different OS I have under VM and level of security I impose on them (security for security sake teaches me so I can apply the apropriate lower level of security practices for my clients).

Don't let that fool you though. There are some very good "just works" distributions that will never require an average user to look under the hood. In the 5% of cases remaining where cli is required, well, it's like breaks and steering in your car; go see your local gear head.

In my case, discussions with average users are more gear towards "it took X minutes to install with Y number of steps". It's about how easy it is, now how long I can take with some obscure whim on my own systems.